Mormons excommunicate Australian author

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An Australian author who wrote that DNA evidence fails to
support the ancestral claims outlined in the Book of Mormon has
been excommunicated by The Church of Jesus of Christ of Latter-day
Saints.

After a three-hour disciplinary council meeting on Sunday in
Canberra, Simon Southerton, author of Losing a Lost Tribe: Native
Americans, DNA and the Book of Mormon, was informed his
relationship with his religion of 30 years would be officially
severed, Southerton said in an email to The Associated Press.

Southerton was charged by church authorities with adultery, but
finally excommunicated for "having an inappropriate relationship
with a woman," he said.

Southerton doesn't deny the relationship, which occurred two
years ago, while he was separated from his wife. The Southertons
have since reconciled, and Jane Southerton testified on behalf of
her husband.

Southerton said he refused to discuss his personal life with
church leaders on Sunday, instead asking them why he was not
answering to charges of apostasy for having widely published on the
internet and in his book his doubts about the church and his
beliefs about DNA science.

Church leaders responded, Southerton wrote, by saying they were
not avoiding the "issue of apostasy and that the charge they were
investigating was more important."

"I am now convinced that they were intent on avoiding a council
on the charge of apostasy," Southerton said in his email to the
AP.

"I was clearly instructed before the meeting that if I attempted
to talk about 'DNA' and my apostasy that the council would be
immediately shut down and that it would be completed in my
absence."

Mormon church officials do not comment on the decisions of local
church leaders, church spokesman Scott Trotter said.

A former church bishop, Southerton voluntarily left the Mormon
church seven years ago, after deciding he could no longer believe
some of its teachings.

His book, published in 2004, outlines how existing DNA data for
American Indians does not support the Mormon beliefs that the
continent's earliest inhabitants were descendants of Israelite
patriarch Lehi.

The church teaches that Lehi was an ancient seafarer who came to
the New World about 600 BC, according to church founder Joseph
Smith's 1830 Book of Mormon. Smith claimed to have translated the
text from inscribed gold plates unearthed from an upstate New York
hillside. His book is viewed by many members as a literal record of
God's dealings with early Americans.

Australian church authorities have discussed the book at length
with Southerton, who works as a plant geneticist for the
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, and
believes church concerns about his writing are the underlying
reason they sought his excommunication.

"I also told (church leaders) that it was extremely unusual for
the church to pursue someone who hadn't had anything to do with the
church for the last seven years," Southerton wrote.

Southerton plans to appeal the decision to the Mormon church's
Salt Lake City-based leaders, known as the First Presidency.

Ultimately, if the decision stands, Southerton's name will be
removed from official church rolls in Salt Lake City.

Southerton's excommunication makes him the seventh author from
the Salt Lake City-based Signature Books, a publishing house for
Western and Mormon studies, to be released from the church after
publishing a work critical of Mormon beliefs.